Buy an Xbox One, get any game free

Microsoft is offering a sweet deal over the next week to gamers looking to buy an Xbox One.

XBOX ONE

Between September 7 and September 13, Microsoft will give one free game to anyone who buys anXbox One, Xbox One with Kinect, Xbox One Madden NFL 15 bundle, or Xbox One Forza Motorsport 5 bundle, the company announced on Thursday.

Unlike some other past promotions from Microsoft and other console makers that required gamers to choose between a selection of titles, Microsoft is offering the free deal on any game that's available at the time of purchase. That means everything from Titanfall to the highly anticipated Destiny is included in the deal.

Despite the somewhat loose restrictions, there are some caveats. The deal doesn't apply to preorders, so any game launching later this year will not apply. Microsoft is also banning refurbished consoles or used games from the deal. Gamers must also buy the title on physical disc and its value must not exceed $59.99 before tax.

Microsoft's move is shrewd, if nothing else. Next week, Destiny, the first major non-Halo title released by Bungie, is hitting store shelves September 9 (Tuesday), and it's expected to make quite a splash. Since it's not exclusive to the Xbox One but could be a huge hardware-seller for both Sony and Microsoft, the software giant's decision to offer it for free with the purchase of an Xbox One makes choosing its console far more palatable to some customers. It also puts Sony on notice to respond.

Whether Sony will actually respond, however, remains to be seen. Sony has announced that it has sold 10 million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide since the hardware's launch last year. It's believed, though not confirmed by Microsoft, that it has sold approximately 5 million Xbox One units in about the same time. The free game offer may be a ploy on Microsoft's part to inch closer to the PlayStation 4.

A Microsoft spokesperson told in an e-mailed statement that most major retailers will be participating in the free game offer, including Best Buy, GameStop, Target, Walmart, Amazon, and Toys 'R Us. The company urged gamers to check with local retailers not listed to see if they're participating.

Samsung Gear Circle

Bluetooth headphones come in several different varieties, including the in-ear, around-the-neck version popularized by LG with its Tone stereo headsets. Now Samsung's come out with the Gear Circle, its own space-age spin on that wireless headphone design.

SAMSUNG GEAR CIRCLE

Available in October, the Gear Circle will come in black, blue, and white, though Samsung was only showing the blue and white models at an event in New York to announce its newGalaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge smartphones, along with the Gear S and Gear VR devices. No word on pricing yet.
That neck piece houses the electronics and battery, which is bigger than the battery found in earbud-only wireless headphones such as the Plantronics BackBeat Go 2 (the Circle's battery life is rated at 9 hours, which is decent).

Lenovo Y70 Touch

Lenovo's cult favorite gaming PC collection is getting a new entry in the form of the 17.3-inch Y70 Touch.

Like the 15-inch Y50 version, which has been one of the PCs most asked-about by readers in 2014, the Y70 version includes laptop features rarely seen together in a single system. Those include a slim 17-inch body, current-gen Nvidia discrete graphics, JBL speakers with a built-in subwoofer for better audio, and a high-resolution touchscreen.

Like the Y50, this version has a brushed black metal shell embossed in a crosshatch pattern, with a subtle chrome Lenovo logo on the back panel. Red accents include wedge-shaped speaker grilles and a red backlit keyboard.

lenovo y70 keyboard 

The specs top out at a current-gen quad-core Core i7 CPU, Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M GPU, and up to 1TB of hybrid drive storage, or a 512GB SSD. The display is a full-HD 1,920x1,080 panel, with no plans for a 4K version yet, despite it being an option on the smaller Y50 model.

The Lenovo Y70 Touch will be available beginning in October, starting at $1,300. Pricing and worldwide availability has not yet been announced, but converted pricing would be about £790, or AU$1,400.

INTEL CORE I7-5960X REVIEW

High

• Amazing multi-core performance
• X99 platform offers excellent connectivity
• Surprisingly efficient

Lows

• Very expensive
• Not compatible with previous LGA2011 sockets
• Doesn’t work with DDR3 RAM

Before Haswell goes away, however, Intel has decided to let it have one last hurrah in the form of Haswell-E. This new line of processors offers six to eight cores, and is launching alongside the X99 platform, which is the first ever to support DDR4 RAM. The star of the show is the Core i7-5960X processor, an eight-core behemoth clocked at 3 GHz.

Such extreme hardware is sure to make enthusiasts salivate but, as usual, Intel’s quickest Extreme Edition comes with an equally extreme price of $999.

How much performance can a grand buy you?

Same old architecture

From a technical perspective, the Core i7-5960X is the least exciting component of this launch. Though it manages to provide eight cores, which is a first for any Intel processor (previous Extreme Editions maxed out at six), it does so without any fancy footwork. Intel has simply added more Haswell cores, and slapped on more cache (20MB, split between all cores) to match.

One thing this processor doesn’t include is integrated graphics. This is not odd for a high-end Intel chip, but it’s worth mentioning because it can surprise people who are new to enthusiast hardware. Every Haswell-E desktop needs a dedicated graphics card.

Exciting new platform

While the processor itself offers few surprises, the new X99 platform is a different story. As Intel’s latest flagship platform, it offers a buffet of features, some of which are firsts. While releasing a radically revised platform may seem odd with Broadwell right around the corner, Intel has indicated that it will launch with mobilechips, then follow up with desktop parts. X99 will likely be Intel’s latest-and-greatest until the spring of 2015.

The big story is support for DDR4 RAM. Everyone needs memory, of course; the quicker is better. This is a big win for anyone running large, complex programs. For this niche, the fact that X99 supports DDR4 with speeds up to 2133 MHz across four channels may prove to be important. It makes sense that Intel would release DDR4 first on an expensive platform meant for expensive processors, as buyers interested in such chips are those most likely to be interested in quicker RAM.

DDR4 isn’t entirely a boon, however, as there are several problems. Like all new technologies, it comes with a hefty early adopter tax. Four sticks of DDR4 memory totaling 16GB (that’s four per stick) will set you back well over $200.

That’s about three times more than equivalent DDR3 memory. X99 also supports speeds only up to 2133 MHz, which is lower than the standard’s maximum. Owners of this platform won’t be able to use the quickest DDR4 RAM available.

Quick and efficient

We hooked up the 5960X and the X99 motherboard up to our wattmeter. We noted idle power draw of 74.6 watts, and load draw of 156.9 watts. An Nvidia GT 650 video card was also installed. These figures are much higher than a typical Intel quad core CPU, but are still solid given the platform’s impressive performance. Falcon Northwest’s Talon, which we reviewed earlier this year, was equipped with an overclocked Core i7-4770K, and consumed only ten watts less.

Conclusion

The Intel Core i7-5960X pushes the bleeding edge of desktop performance forward. In our tests, we found it to be up to 43 percent quicker than the six-core 4960X, Intel’s previous Extreme Edition chip, and up to 77 percent faster than the 4770K quad-core.

Unsurprisingly, Intel’s newest chip achieves its greatest victories in tests which are reliant on multi-threaded performance, like the 7-Zip compression benchmark. In Geekbench’s single-core test, the 5960X’s relatively low clock speed puts it behind some of Intel’s old quad-cores.